So I know I said I would start #TheReadingQuest challenge with reading the Lies of Locke Lamora (which for the record, I’m about 3/4ish a way through and am really enjoying – I’ll write a proper review for that when I’m done with it) but I got sidetracked when I found this book in the library and speedread it within a few hours. A disclaimer: I haven’t actually read the first book of this series – Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. My only experience with this series is watching the movie adaptation of that first book in 2016, and reading the graphic novel adaptation also based on that first book. Oh and I’ve also read the spin-off book Tales of the Peculiar, the fairytales that feature in Hollow City.

This series has a neat premise. It’s set in a world where “peculiars”, people with strange abilities (like being so light that they float in the air, having a hive of bees living in their stomach or being completely invisible), live in time loops protected from the outside world. In Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, these time loops were raided by wights and hollowghasts, horrific creatures that hunted peculiar children for their eyes, ultimately to increase their own power and chance at immortality. Hollow City continues from the aftermath of the first book, and follows the adventures of the peculiar children from Miss Peregrine’s timeloop. With their timeloop destroyed, they are back in England 1940, the start of WWII, searching desperately for a cure for theirward Miss Peregrine, who is trapped in the form of a peregrine falcon. Their task is made ever more difficult by the wights who hunt them, and the destruction of other timeloops around the world, leaving them with few allies in their quest amid the chaos of wartime England.

I don’t have particularly strong feelings about this book. Hollow City, like the first book that preceded it was unique with its use of vintage photographs interspersed within its pages and its unusual premise of peculiar children. I honestly read it mostly for the storyline. I was curious to know what would happen next, and was relatively engrossed throughout. The pacing was perhaps a little slow and the book is written in first person which isn’t really a bad thing, but something I thought I should mention. The protagonist almost blended into the background for me, so the first person narration wasn’t too intrusive or memorable. I quite enjoyed reading about the children’s peculiarities and the way the plot turned out at the end, and the whole feel of the book was, as I said before, very unique. I’d definitely read the sequel (Library of Souls) if I ever came across it in my local library, but it’s not a book that I would seek out and buy. I suppose that this series is aimed towards an audience a bit younger than me, so it’s completely understandable that it doesn’t have as much substance or complexity as the books I’m used to reading. But I would recommend this to anyone who’s interested in the concept of unusual powers, time travel and strange, slightly creepy vintage things.

// For #TheReadingQuest challenge: this was 400 pages (+ 40 HP) and completes the side quest “Time Warp: a book set in either the past or the future” (+10XP). That means as of today, my current status is: Level 1 | XP: 20 | HP: 71 //